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Lately my anxiety is horrible and I find myself hurting myself a lot. I'm trying to stop myself doing it. I've chewed the insides of my cheeks that's it's SO SO swollen, I look like a chipmunk. I've pulled out my hair that I have bald patches in some areas. I've purposely walked into things to bruise myself. My anxiety is horrible that I can't control it but I can control how I hurt myself and I'm trying my hardest to stop but I can't. I need help or tips or advice. I'd be so appreciative of it.

Anxiety used to be one of the biggest reasons that I felt like harming myself. I never really found a great solution to the problem though. The one and only thing that helped me was distracting myself from the anxious thoughts. The main way I would do this is by reading. For me, reading was something that I had to concentrate on and so that concentration led to me, slowly, not being able to focus so much on the anxious thoughts. It might help if you could find something to distract yourself with as well (it doesn't have to be reading).

If you have seen a doctor about your anxiety it might be possible for them to prescribe something. I know not all people like to use anxiety medication either.

Lastly, if you have the ability, it might help to talk to a therapist about your anxiety and work on trying to find some coping skills. Also, talking to a therapist about what is causing you to be anxious could be helpful because, at least for me, sometimes being able to voice my anxious thoughts has helped.

A guided meditation with a good teacher in a small group can be very restful.

Can also do meditation at home. There are guided meditations you can download on your phone. (Headspace is one. It has good animated intro videos explaining the concept at the beginning of lessons 3,5,7,9.)

Meditation may take a couple weeks of doing before noticing results. (This is because the brain apparently uses the first 2 weeks to prepare itself for change. Some of my friends found it very helpful immediately.)

Alternatives are Mindfulness Motion Exercises, such as Qi-Gong is probably the easiest. Tai-Chi is similar. Various forms of Yoga. (Therapeutic Yoga. There are so many variations on Yoga it's almost a generic term now.)

(Those Eastern Medicine people really got something that works and they know how to use it. Buddhist places often have meditation classes. Or chanting classes you could try. Chanting may be another way to get one's mind focused and off those endless circular thoughts that cause anxiety.)

Beyond that, being in a calm soothing place if there's a place you can go. The beach. The lake. The forest. Wherever.

Support groups may help with anxiety, if you can find one that doesn't cause anxiety. (Yea, ironic I know.)

The good news is the brain can actually change itself and become a less anxious brain. You can force it to rewire itself, but it takes this Mindfulness focusing one's mind on it effort. No instant cure, but keep at it and it should slowly change over weeks. Should be a noticeable change by 3 months.

In the meantime, there's distraction (watch TV, do art, anything that focus the mind off the thoughts of anxiety.) There's talking with someone. Telling someone your problems if they know how to just listen and not try to fix or come up with a solution (the listening itself is the fix. It's not that we have a problem, it's that we are having a reaction to our problem. We actually have 2 problems: there's the problem itself, and then there's our reaction to the problem. The second one we can change. Just having someone listen to us can be very cathartic.)

Hey I know what you mean I used to cut my arm all of the time because I felt like no one liked me or wanted me but then I started to make friends after talking to people and not eating alone taking risks and it made a hell of a lot of a difference. I know it's not easy but you need to try your hardest to blend in and try to make friends that YOU think you could be good with and try to talk to as many people as you can then you can see who u think u could have a good relationship with.